Unlikely Counsel
by paganpunk2
Summary: Slippy knows he's the only one on the team who's in the dark about Falco's past. When he's caught eavesdropping on a private conversation, will he finally be brought into the fold? T for language, because Falco.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: This is just a sweet little Slippy and Falco friendship piece in which they both make much-needed confessions. Happy reading!**

* * *

Slippy was walking past the door to Falco's room on board the _Great Fox_ when a loud female voice stopped him in his tracks. "Shit…you know something? I should have aborted you."

"Whoa, hey, now," a calm, masculine tone replied. "Patricia, consider what you just said. How do you think that makes your son feel?"

"You're wasting your time, doc," a third person said dismissively. "She doesn't care."

The third person had been Falco. Recognizing his team mate's cadence, Slippy shook his head. The avian had clearly decided to waste the afternoon watching the trashy talk shows he was so strangely fond of. None of the rest of the team understood why Falco liked seeing the dregs of humanity airing their dirty laundry on television. They'd suggested once that he spend his spare time more constructively, but rather than take their advice Falco had retreated to his room. Now he indulged his habit on his personal screen rather than the one in the common room. In a way Slippy appreciated this, as he disliked hearing strangers yell at each other five days a week. At the same time, though, he thought it was a shame that everyone saw a lot less of Falco as a result of his TV predilections.

Under usual circumstances Slippy would have kept walking once he realized what was going on. The only thing that stopped him now was the fact that he couldn't recall Falco ever talking back to his programs before. During movies the avian was a snarky chatterbox, but when real people were tearing each other apart he fell silent. The woman who had spoken first must be a real piece of work to have irked Falco into giving a useless retort.

And she was going again, too. "I mean it. I didn't want a baby, but my scumbag boyfriend got in the way. I had an appointment at the clinic and everything until he talked me out of it. He got all sappy, told me oh no, he was gonna take care of me, take care of the baby. He was gonna get a good job, buy me a ring, get us off of housing assistance. We were gonna live the Cornerian Dream, he said." A short, sharp whistle – the avian equivalent of a derisive snort – sounded. "It was a lie, of course. The prick hung around until I was too far along to get an abortion, then he vanished. Left me alone with a baby I never asked for."

"Okay, now we're getting somewhere," the unfamiliar male voice put in. "Patricia, how did that make you feel?"

"How do you _think_ it made me feel? It made me feel like I'd been abandoned! It made me feel stuck! It made me feel like getting blind drunk and throwing myself down the stairs a time or two! And I did it, too, but it didn't do any good. No, that grubby little parasite hung on inside me, draining me just like his father had."

"It sounds like maybe you transferred your hatred for your ex onto your son." Slippy struggled to recognize the host, but he couldn't. The voice didn't match that of any of the three TV personalities whose shows Falco liked. There was something else odd about what he was hearing, too, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it.

"Of course I did! How was I supposed to not hate him when he came out looking just like that deadbeat who'd knocked me up? I tried for a minute or two after he was born. I tried to love him, or at least not to hate him. But all he did was take, take, take. Yeah, I know, children do that, but damn it, I didn't want to be a mother. I _never_ wanted to be a mother, and I was one anyway. And there was nothing I could do about it."

"Ever heard of adoption?" came a scathing suggestion from Falco.

Slippy's eyes widened as he finally pinpointed what was missing. Falco's talk shows were always full of audience reactions, the hisses and cheers that told the people at home who they were supposed to be rooting for. Those ambient noises were completely absent from this recording. He couldn't imagine a production company breaking from the usual formula for such lowest-common-denominator swill, though. What the hell was Falco watching – and apparently being worked up by – in there?

"Adoption wasn't an option, you cocky little bastard," the woman snapped back. "Do you know what people would have said about me if I'd given you to the cops? They would have called me an unnatural woman. They would have shunned me. I wasn't gonna shoot myself in the foot like that. I needed my friends. I needed my community."

"Yeah, you're right. Neglecting me emotionally and letting your boyfriends smack me around when they were high was _way_ more acceptable than giving me a chance at a normal life would have been."

Slippy gave a squeak of shock. This wasn't a show at all; he was listening to a private conversation. What he'd thought was a television program must actually be a video call between Falco, his mother, and a third party. Guilt warred with concern as he continued to linger by the door. On the one hand he was blatantly eavesdropping. On the other, this sounded like the kind of confrontation that Falco might need to talk about afterward. Had Fox or Peppy been home he could have fetched one of them. They knew far more than he did about Falco's past, and they had more experience in getting him to open up, too. But they were off-world and not due back for days. If anyone was going to lend a friendly ear when this was done it had to be Slippy.

"I gave you _everything_!" Falco's mother declared. "I put food in your mouth and clothes on your back, didn't I? I kept a roof over your head."

"Easy now, Patricia," warned the man Falco had referred to as a doctor.

"You only did those things when you remembered not to spend all of your money getting your nails done or trolling the bars for your next sugar daddy!"

"Okay, now, let's stop and talk about that," the doctor tried. His voice betrayed the beginnings of desperation. "Patricia-"

Patricia wasn't listening. "I had needs too, Falco!" she shrieked. "I was too young to be a mother! I wasn't done having fun!"

Falco's volume rose to meet that of his mother. "Yeah? And what was I supposed to have, huh? Because all I can remember now are the things I _didn't_ have. I didn't have a sense of safety in my own home. I didn't have anyone to turn to when I had a question or a problem. I didn't have a mother. I didn't have love."

"That wasn't my fault!"

"Well it sure as fuck wasn't my fault!" There was a thump that Slippy interpreted as Falco jumping to his feet. "And it isn't going to be my fault if you rot in jail for the rest of your miserable life, either!"

Suddenly Patricia was all sweetness and reconciliation. "Oh, no…oh, Falco…sweetheart…I'm sorry, I just…I get so emotional…please…"

"No. Just...no." Falco's words shook. "This was your shot at making things right, and all you can think about is yourself. You're not even trying. So fuck it. I'm done. I'm not doing this anymore."

"That's your choice, Falco," the doctor put in, "but I want to make sure that you know that successful completion of family counseling is a requirement of your mother's early release. The judge may make her serve her full sentence if she's unable to do that."

"I don't care. She hasn't changed. She hasn't learned anything from all the time she's spent behind bars. She might have given birth to me, but she's a terrible person and I want nothing to do with her. I don't ever want her to try to contact me again."

"Weren't you listening?" Patricia was shrieking now, and Slippy shrank back from the door. "I didn't mean what I said, you stupid bast-!"

Silence cut her off mid-sentence as Falco ended the call. Angry footsteps moved towards the hallway. Slippy gulped. There was no time for him to escape. His intention in listening had been good-hearted, but he wouldn't blame his team mate for being upset about it. What he had overheard were all terribly private things, things that Falco had never mentioned of his own accord. It was going to be a long rest of the week if the only other person on the ship decided to give him the cold shoulder in retaliation for snooping.

The door opened. Their eyes met, and Falco paused. To Slippy's surprise there was very little rage or annoyance present in the avian's expression. In their places were confusion and hurt, two emotions that were far more painful to witness. "Falco? Are…are you-"

"How long were you standing out here?"

Slippy had expected to be yelled at. He'd been questioned quietly, however, and in his surprise it took him a second to answer. "Um…a minute or two, I guess?"

"...So you heard all that."

"I heard...some of it."

"Where'd you come in?"

"At...at the part where she said that she...well...that she should have..." Slippy could feel his face growing hot. "Gosh, Falco, I didn't mean to-"

"The part where she said she should have aborted me?" He asked the question as if he was making small talk about the chance of overnight rain.

"Ah...yeeeeaaah. That part. Listen, Falco, I wasn't trying to-"

He was interrupted for a third time. "Damn it. I knew I was stupid to try and do that from here. I was stupid to do it at all. Stupid to try." He closed his eyes and pressed his fingertips against his temples. "I guess you see now where I get all my patience and goodwill, huh?"

Slippy gaped at him. "Falco..."

Falco heaved a sigh and shook his head. His eyes opened as his hands fell back to his side. "Yeah. Well. Sorry about that. Sorry about her." His focus shifted to some point a thousand yards beyond Slippy's shoulder. "...Sorry about me." And with that he turned in the direction of the docking bay and started walking.

Speechless, Slippy stared after him. Falco – Falco _Lombardi_ , of all people – had just apologized for...for what? For being himself? Slippy's brow knit. Sure, Falco's sarcasm was dark and biting and unpleasant to be on the receiving end of, but he was rarely incorrect in his observations. The fact that Slippy was often the target of the avian's cruelest remarks was just a side effect of his being mediocre at most of the things that Falco was exceptionally talented in. Sometimes it hurt, yes, but Slippy had long ago heeded Fox's advice about not taking it personal. Honesty was something that Falco had never shied away from; if he felt real dislike towards a person he would say so outright. He'd never said anything of the sort to or about Slippy, so they were good.

It wasn't Falco's habit to offer blunt truths about his own life, however. His inborn attitude was a double-edged sword, but he was skilled enough in wielding it that he rarely cut himself. For him to fall on his own weapon instead of slicing Slippy to verbal ribbons for sticking his nose where it didn't belong left the toad with his heart in his stomach.

Only when the other man had disappeared did he find his voice again. "Falco! Hey, wait!" He jogged after him, half-certain that he wouldn't have stopped at the sound of his name but determined to catch up anyway. Rounding the corner, he almost slammed into his quarry. "Gah...oh. You...you actually waited."

"Yeah, well...what is it, Slippy? What do you want?"

"Um...hey, look, are you okay? I mean, that...that was rough. What she said. Your mom."

Falco's eyes widened. Slippy would have sworn that he saw the glimmer of unshed tears in them just before their owner blinked rapidly and shrugged. "Whatever. It's not the first time I've heard any of it." The answer sounded forced, but Falco went on before Slippy could object. "I'm gonna go do a couple loops of the planet. Make sure everything's where we left it."

"But patrol's not due for three hours." The team was receiving small but steady paychecks for remaining on-call in Cornerian orbit and making their presence known a couple times per day. With Andross destroyed and his remaining supporters dispersed there wasn't much else for them to do besides hover over the capital and go on the occasional milk run. They weren't really needed for security purposes, or so Fox said, but giving them something to live on until the next time there was trouble had been a nice gesture on General Pepper's part.

"Then we won't have to do it in three hours, will we?" And Falco turned to go again.

"Hey..." It didn't feel right. Falco went on random flights all the time, but he never told anyone he was doing so. He just left, came back, and filled out the log so that the others knew they didn't have to patrol unless they wanted to.

Falco glanced back at him. "Hey what?"

"Um...don't do anything dumb, okay?"

A short whistle sounded. It struck Slippy how similar it was to the one that Patricia Lombardi had uttered not ten minutes earlier. "What would I do that's dumb? Huh?"

"I don't know. I don't know what's in your head. I just don't want you to..." _To get in trouble. To get hurt. To hurt yourself._ It was mostly that last one that he was worried about, if he wanted to apply a little of Falco's honesty to his own emotions. "...To do anything you might regret."

The line where red feathers met blue ones above Falco's right eye quirked upward. "Or anything you might feel like _you_ should regret?"

"I _would_ regret it if you did something dumb. Especially if..." Slippy's momentary boldness petered out. "If...you know...it was something that couldn't be fixed."

"If it was _really_ dumb, you mean."

"Yeah."

"Huh." Falco watched him for a second more before he resumed his walk toward the docking bay. "...Huh."

Slippy, not knowing what else to say, let him go.


	2. Chapter 2

Four hours passed. Slippy paced the kitchen for most of that time, feeling like he should do something but uncertain as to the best course. Maybe, he fretted, he should have called Fox as soon as Falco had left. At the very least he should have sent the team's leader a message when the avian hadn't come back or called in after the end of the second hour. It only took thirty minutes to make a leisurely circumference of Corneria; how many times did Falco need to go around before he was sure everything below was fine?

He'd just made up his mind to try and get in touch with someone when a faint _ding_ sounded over the comm system. The notification that someone was pulling into the cruiser was so familiar that he could sleep through it without twitching, but this time he jumped. "Finally," he muttered as he passed into the corridor and turned towards the working sections of the ship. "Four hours, Falco? Really?"

He stopped short at the threshold of the docking bay. The space had been designed for three smaller fighters rather than the four Arwings that they somehow managed to cram into it, and he didn't have to look far to find Falco. For a moment Slippy warred with himself. On the one hand, the avian shouldn't have been sitting atop his fighter with a six pack of beer beside him. On the other, he probably really needed a drink. "Umm...Falco?"

"Let me guess; you're going to get on me for buying booze when there's only the two of us to deal with anything that goes down on Corneria." As he spoke Falco popped the top on the first can. He took a long drink, then leaned back against the cockpit shield, stretched his legs out along the wing, and closed his eyes. "Well, go ahead. You yell at me now, and Fox and Peppy can yell at me later. Whatever. Let's just get it over with."

"I wasn't going to yell at you." He knew he ought to insist that the avian restrict himself to one can, but he didn't have the heart to do it. Besides, Falco was such a phenomenal pilot when sober that being drunk would likely only take him down to excellent. "I just – hey!"

A second can had been snapped from its packaging and sent flying towards his head. Slippy caught it – barely – then frowned at the man who had lobbed it in his direction. "What was that for?!"

"I'm buying your silence. I don't like being yelled at unless everyone's doing it. It's too hard to figure out who's on your side otherwise." Falco took another swig of his own drink. "If one beer isn't enough you can have another. But I'm drinking four of them, so that's it."

"...Is this a trick?"

Falco's brow knit. "What do you mean?"

"You chuck a beer at me and then expect me to open it? It'll go everywhere."

"Well come get a different one, then, if you want to drink it now."

The last place Slippy had ever imagined finding himself was on top of an Arwing splitting a six pack with Falco. It hadn't been on his list of plans for the evening, that much was certain. But something told him that the opportunity wouldn't repeat itself if he refused it now, so even though alcohol had never been his thing he climbed up to join his teammate. "Thanks," he said as Falco took the shaken-up can and handed him another in its place. "So...um...patrol?"

One blue eye popped open and trained itself on him. "That's not what you came in here to talk about. Cut the shit, Slip."

"I..." His shoulders slumped. "Yeah, okay. Sorry."

"Whatever." A beat passed. "Well? What? You heard what she said. You heard what I said. You've got questions. So spit 'em out while I'm still amenable to answering them."

Slippy had been standing on the ladder that gave access to the cockpit. Now he climbed out along the leading edge of the wing until he was even with Falco's knees. There he sat, his legs dangling in the air and his unopened beer clasped tightly in both of his hands. "...Your mom's a bitch, Falco."

"Heh. Now there's a word I've never heard come out of your mouth before." Falco drained the last of his drink and tossed the can over the side. It hit the floor with an empty, metal-on-metal _clink._ Then; "...you have no idea how much of a bitch she is, Slippy. No idea."

Slippy wasn't sure he wanted to know the details, but if Falco was willing to talk then he was willing to listen. "That guy on the call – the doctor guy – said she was serving a sentence for something?"

"She's serving a sentence for lots of things. Possession with intent to sell, trafficking, falsifying her ID chip..." There was a _snap_ as he opened his next beer. "...Using a minor as a drug mule..."

Slippy's jaw dropped. He craned around to stare at Falco. "She... _you_?"

"Sure, me. You heard her; she never wanted kids. I was the only one she had. I guess she figured she might as well make me earn my keep while I was still small enough to avoid suspicion." He gestured to the can Slippy was holding. "Better drink that. You look like you're about to fall off my plane in shock. I have no idea how I'd explain that to Fox."

When the hoppy brew had cut through his disbelief Slippy shook his head. "What was it she was smuggling? Aquas weed in baby food jars or something?"

Now it was Falco's turn to look stunned. "Slippy...sometimes your naivety is fucking overwhelming. Aquas weed in baby food jars? Are you kidding me with that shit?"

Hurt, Slippy looked away. "I'm just trying to help. You don't have to be a jerk about it." He was happy to be a friendly ear, but he wasn't about to sit here and be abused. Setting his beer aside, he slid back along the wing to the ladder. "See you later. Don't try and patrol after drinking; I'll take care of the next one."

His right foot was reaching for the floor when Falco spoke again. "It was Snakebite. The stuff they used to make on Venom, you know?"

Slippy froze. "What...how did she use _you_ to traffic that?" Snakebite was a nasty enough drug that word of its effects had slithered into even his highly sheltered childhood. A drop or two on the tongue was enough to send grown men into limb-tearing rages or stupors so deep they appeared vegetative. There was no telling how a dose would affect the user, even if they'd tried it before.

"She filled little glass capsules with it. It can't eat through glass the way it can plastic. Then...well, then she filled me with the capsules."

Slippy climbed until he could peek over the edge of the wing. "But...if one had broken..."

"If one had broken there would have been an eleven-year-old kid twitching on the floor of Corneria Central Terminal with his guts dissolving inside him. But none of them broke, so..." Half of another beer slid down his throat. "...I'm still here."

There was just enough room on the wing for Slippy to copy Falco's posture. Instead of stretching his legs out, though, he wrapped his arms around them and kept them pulled defensively close. "How...how many times...?"

"Enough that I don't remember."

"So that's why you hate taking pills." Slippy had always rolled his eyes at Falco's refusal to take non-liquid medications when he was sick. Pills were far more shelf-stable than liquids, and the avian's stubborn streak often meant that he prolonged his own misery when he fell ill in deep space. Now he could imagine the fear that swallowing a gel-cap must arouse. "...And that's why Peppy and Fox let you just sweat it out when you catch something. They know about this."

"Yeah. They know. I mean, I only actually told Fox, but he needed to tell someone. It was too much for him to sit on. We were young, and he'd just lost his dad...he couldn't wrap his head around a parent doing that to their kid. So he told Peppy what I'd told him, because he knew he could trust him. Then he about broke his own back trying to apologize. He hated that I'd trusted him with a secret and he'd given it up to someone else. Drove me half-crazy trying to make it up to me."

"You weren't mad at him?" Thinking back Slippy could vaguely remember a weird couple of weeks during their first year at the Academy when Fox had seemed to be looking for ways to do things for Falco. The timing was right, but he didn't recall Falco being pissed off about anything then.

"I was, but...shit, I knew I'd given him a heavy load. And I told him everything else at the same time, about...well..." Falco sighed deeply. "You called it earlier. My mother's a bitch. And she fucked me up good." Another can went sailing over the side. "...She fucked me up good."

"I...I don't think you're-"

He broke off as Falco went on. "Sometimes I wonder, you know. I wonder what I would have been like if I'd had decent parents. Even one, just _one_ decent parent. Or if she'd given me up; if I'd grown up in an orphanage, at one of those big places out in farm country. I wonder what it would be like to have a first memory other than seeing someone getting shot on a street corner. I wonder what it would have been like to be warm enough and fed enough, even when it was cold outside and assistance money day was long gone. I wonder how it feels to be a kid and know – just _know,_ without even thinking about it _–_ that you're loved.

"I'll never know what that's like. Never. And it's not right."

Slippy watched Falco as he spoke. The avian's gaze never left the ceiling, and despite the glimmer that had seemed to be there earlier his eyes were dry now. Somehow that hurt the worst. To hear Falco confess to all of the things he knew he'd never had and see that he was so resigned to that fact that he had no tears to cry over his loss...it was too much like giving up. "Gosh, Fal, I wish...I wish I had a time machine. Or something."

"Even if you did, you couldn't fix it."

Slippy frowned. "Well, I could try."

"And then what?"

"...What do you mean?"

"And then where are we? Any of us? You, me, Fox, Peppy, Lylat...where are we then? Not here. Not now. Not like we are."

"You wouldn't trade it?" It was impossible. "You can't tell me you wouldn't trade in for a childhood with decent parents. If Andross was still defeated in the end, you can't tell me you wouldn't want to trade for a less awful upbringing."

Falco glanced at him. "That's one hell of a gamble you're proposing. Hoping you'll get a kinder, gentler Falco out of the bet, or what?"

"It's not that. It's just that at least then you wouldn't have to deal with all this. It's like you said; it's not right. No kid deserves what happened to you." Slippy paused as something dawned on him. "Anyway, I...I don't know that I'd get a 'kinder, gentler Falco' out of the bet."

"Meaning what?"

"...You gave her a chance." The words came out in a whisper. "Your mother. Even after everything she did, and everything she let other people do...you gave her a chance."

Now Falco was staring at him, his expression full of rare uncertainty. "Do you think...do you think I should give her another one? Would that be the right thing?"

"Jesus, Falco, no!" Slippy surprised himself with the vociferousness of his reply. "...No. Why would you?"

"Dunno. I guess maybe because I've gotten a lot of chances that I didn't really deserve. It feels wrong not to pass it on, or...or something."

"Chances you didn't deserve?" Slippy knew better. They'd been at school together, after all; he was well aware of the amount of work that had to be put in by even the best flyers if they wanted to graduate. So far as he could tell Falco had earned what he had, fair and square. "What are you talking about?"

"...Damn it. I forgot you don't already know about the stuff that happened before the Academy. I'm used to talking to Fox about shit like this."

"Well _tell_ me, then! I'm sick of being out of the loop. You and Fox know all these things about each other, and it's really frustrating sometimes. You have these looks, like you don't even have to talk to know what the other is thinking. You just _get_ each other, and I...I feel really left out, Falco." He traced a line of rivets with one finger, unable to meet the piercing look he was being given. "I know you guys don't do it intentionally, but it still hurts. It hurts to be the outsider."

For a long moment there was no sound in the docking bay. "...Don't tell Fox that," Falco said finally. "It'll make him feel bad."

Slippy's shoulders slumped. "Sure. I'll just...maintain the status quo. Don't want to make anyone feel bad." Never mind how he was feeling about things.

"That's not what I meant." Falco blew out a long breath and tilted his head back so he could stare at the ceiling once more. "...I'll tell you, Slippy. Okay? I'll tell you the same stuff I've told Fox. Not tonight – I just...can't...tonight – but soon."

"That...I'd like that. Well, not _like_ it, I don't mean I'll get pleasure out of hearing about bad stuff that happened to you, I just meant-"

But Falco was laughing, chuckling in the deep way he did when something innocent had amused him. "I know that's not what you meant. And I know telling you isn't a total solution to you feeling left out, too. But...maybe it will help."

"Maybe it will help both of us," Slippy mused.

"...Yeah. Maybe so." A fresh _crack_ rang out as Falco lifted the tab on his third beer. "Want another?"

"I've still got most of the last one you gave me."

"Well, drink it, then. And let's figure out something else to talk about. This topic's depressing."

"Sure." He could feel a smile lifting the corners of his lips. Drinking on top of an Arwing with Falco might have been one of the last things he could have ever pictured himself doing, but it wasn't a half bad way to spend an evening. It wasn't half bad at all. "Let's do that."


End file.
